Yucca baccata
Banana Yucca
Family: Asparagaceae
This is a generally short but wide-growing yucca usually reaching about 4’ tall sometimes 5 or 6’ on older specimens. But they will spread to about 6’ wide or more, producing multiple rosettes. The long lance-shaped leaves have numerous curled filaments along the edges. In spring into summer reddish to purplish flower buds appear and form into large panicles of white bell-shaped flowers. They are followed by their namesake, banana-shaped fruits.
This species is very closely related to Yucca shidigera (the Mojave yucca) and some hybrids of the plants exist where they intersect.
Plant in full to part sun, with good drainage. Low water is needed when plants are established. This plant is very cold hardy, to -20°F.
The flowers attract numerous insects. Banana yucca is pollinated by the nocturnal pronuba moth. Moths specific to banana yucca can remain in diapause for up to 30 years, emerging only when climatic cues are optimal for development. These same moths may be responsible for the creation of Y. baccata x Y. schidigera hybrids. When a yucca moth is not present, the flowers must be cross pollinated by hand if fruit and seeds are to be produced. The larva of the yucca moth develop in the fruit and eat a few of the seeds. It is a larval host to the ursine giant skipper, yucca giant skipper, and various yucca moths (Proxodus species). After feeding, the skippers pupate in the yucca's roots. The fruits attract birds, deer, and insects.
The flowers are edible, raw or cooked. The fruits are edible, best eaten roasted. Here is an article Spruce Eats did on eating banana yucca. The fruits can be eaten and/or stored in a number of ways. The fibers of the leaves are made into many different items such as sandals, baskets, nets, and hair brushes; the roots are known to be used to make soaps.
There is confusion between the word yuca and yucca and this goes back to the father of botany: early reports of the species were confused with the cassava (Manihot esculenta). Consequently, Linnaeus mistakenly derived the generic name for Yucca from the Taíno word for the cassava, yuca. The species name, baccata, means having pulpy, berry-like fruits, from Latin bacca, for small, round fruit.
There are 2 varieties in Yucca baccata:
Yucca baccata var. baccata (AZ, CA, CO, NM, NV, TX, UT): Foliage is more blue, longer and wider, unlikely to form trunks.
Yucca baccata var. brevifolia, Thornber yucca (AZ, NM): Greener foliage, more slender and shorter leaves, plants form trunks eventually. This plant is sometimes referred to as Yucca arizonica.
Found on slopes and flats in a variety of different soil types from 3,000-8,000 ft. in southern California and southern Nevada, east to southwestern Colorado, through Arizona, New Mexico and western Texas; in adjacent Mexico in Sonora and Chihuahua.
Inflorescence initiating on Yucca baccata var. baccata, photo by kernr on iNaturalist
Yucca baccata var. baccata, fruit. Photo by Al Schneider, SEINET
Yucca baccata var. brevifolia photo by Reid Hardin, iNaturalist
Yucca baccata var. brevifolia is caulescent, meaning that they are more likely to form trunks. Photo by Curren Frasch, iNaturalist.